TSSG explores opportunities for EU-North America collaborations

On 8th July the DISCOVERY project, which has TSSG as a partner, held a successful Capacity Building Workshop on EU-North America collaboration in ICT Research & Innovation at the University of Toronto.

This capacity-building workshop is part of the DISCOVERY cycle of workshops to explore and share opportunities for EU-North America collaboration in ICT R&I under EU H2020, Canada and US Programmes. The event was held just after SAVI Annual General Meeting on 6th & 7th July. The workshop was attended by funding agencies, researchers and industry leaders interested in ICT R&I collaborative projects with Europe. It showcased practical knowledge and successful examples of collaboration between North America and EU in the field of ICT, and it combined panel discussions with project ideas generation.

The event gathered high profile keynote speakers from leading Canada and US funding organisations.

Alberto Leon-Garcia from SAVI gave an introduction to open the DISCOVERY workshop, this was then followed by a welcome note delivered by Ted Sargent, Vice President of University of Toronto – International. Then DISCOVERY’s three working groups were presented by their respective chairs Jostein Sundet, NordForsk; Camille Sailer, EACCNJ; and Bríd Walsh, TSSG.

The highlights of the day were the discussions and exchanges about the current options for collaboration and research programmes. The Canadian research programmes were introduced by Eric Bastien and Mathew Lucas from SSHRC and Martin Lord (OCE); the EU H2020 was presented by Yolanda Ursa from INMARK, Coordinator of DISCOVERY project; and the US funding perspectives addressed by Ken Calvert, lead on NSF cybersecurity R&D investments. Another session was about the approaches and the experience of successful collaborative projects and initiatives, including GENI, US Ignite and FIWARE initiatives.

The workshop participants had an insightful breakout session, which were focused on the following three areas:

Having deliberated the results of the discussion, some major areas of interest for cooperation between Europe and North America in ICT were identified, for example, cloud infrastructure and platforms for IoT, big data, cybersecurity, and cloud computing. These topics will be followed up in the upcoming ICT Discovery Lab that will be held in Oct. 13, Toronto at OCAD University. It is hoped the achievement of the workshop will contribute to the EU – North America dialogue for ICT collaboration.